"Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the trackO' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac;Of fur and gun, an' ranch, an' run, an' moose an' caribou,An' bulldogs eatin' us to death!Good-bye—Good-luck to you!"
Mirror Landing, where we leave the boat to make the portage to Soto Landing, is on the Lesser Slave River, at its confluence with the Athabasca. Its name has been well chosen, for the Lesser Slave River is a clear stream, and shows a kindly portrait to all who look therein. A telegraph office, an official residence, a stable, and storage sheds are the only buildings. What is to be done with the portaging party, whom we have met here and who go back to Athabasca Landing on our boat, is beyond a mere woman to say. Both parties must spend the night here; there is only one bunk to every twenty persons, and those who hold possession utterly refuse to sleep outside with the mosquitoes and bulldog flies. Once I read a story in the Talmud which I considered wholly fabulous. It was about a mosquito saving the life of David when Saul hunted him upon the mountains. I no longer doubt this story, my incredulity having vanished this day with my courage. A mosquito is big enough to do anything.
A member of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, truly a most formidable appearing man, insisted on searching our luggage for contraband liquor. I was sorely displeased, and could have dealt him a clout with all my might, for the froward manner in which he turned out my things to the public view. He might have known if I carried a flask, it would be in my coat pocket. His only find was an unbroached bottle of elderberry wine which a rancher's wife was bringing home for her dinner-party next Christmas. Be it said to the youth's credit that upon the circumstances being explained to him he returned the wine to her. He had no authority for so doing, but assuredly he had the countenance of a great example Yahveh of the Jews having aforetime "winked at" certain breaches of the law which He considered to be the better kept in their non-observance.
The liquor taken by the police is either given to the hospital at Grouard or poured on the ground as a libation to Bacchus and his woodland troup. It is very foolish to ask the officer in command if his men ever drink themselves, for he will say, "Pooh! Pooh!" and use other argumentative exclamations that will fright you out of your wits. You would almost think the subject was loaded, and it takes a soft look and a wondrously soft answer to turn away his wrath.
Early in the evening I was invited to browse at the official residence, and I had a good time; that is to say, I found it distinctly entertaining. "I would say that you are very welcome," remarked my hostess as she held out both her hands, "were it not that it seems an understanding of the fact. I have read yourSowing Seeds in Danny, and feel that I know you extremely well."
It was fortunate I did not tell her she had confused me with Mrs. McClung, for she gave me eggs to eat that were most cunningly scrambled with cheese; also many hot rolls sopped in butter, and yellow honey in its comb.
This is a ramblesome bungalow and very comfortable. Musical instruments, couches, big cushions, book-shelves and pictures take on a peculiar attractiveness when they are the only ones in a hundred miles or more.
After supper we readPhil-o-rum Juneau, by William Henry Drummond, and discussed its relation to the French Canadian legend,La Chasse-Gallerie. Of all our Canadian legends, I like it the best, and it may happen that you will too. It tells how on each New Year's Night the spirits of the woodsmen and rivermen are carried in phantom canoes from these lonely northlands back to the old homesteads in the south, where, unseen and undisturbed, they mingle with their friends. The father embraces his children; the lover his maiden, the husband his wife, and once more the son lays his head on his mother's lap. All of the voyageurs join the feast, the song, and the dance, so that no man is lonely in those hours, neither is he weary or sad. It is a better thing, I make believe, than even the communion of saints. But just before the dawn comes, the wraith men find themselves back on the Athabasca, the Mackenzie and the Slave, and no one speaks of where he has been, or of what he experienced, for all this he must keep hidden in his heart.
When, over a century ago, the legend first sprang to life, there were none save men to travel like this, but now, of times, a woman may travel too. I know this for a certainty in that each New Year's Night I go myself. In my dug-out canoe—delved from wishful thoughts and things like that—I take my hurried way across prodigious seas of ice where never living foot has fallen; adown ill-noted trails through silver trees; by hidden caverns that are the lairs of the running winds; over dark forests of pine and across uncounted leagues of white prairies which light up the darkness, till I come to the warmer southland, where youths and maidens make wreaths of greenery, and where mellow-voiced bells ring out the dying year.
And when those who are my own people feel their hearts to be of a sudden rifled of love; that some one has brushed their cheek, or that a head is resting on their shoulder, then do they know the exile has come back, for I have told them it will be thus.
And you, O my readers of the Seven Seas, now that we are friends and know each other closely, will you of New Year's Night be keenly watchful too.
It was here that our conversation wheeled off from the consideration of this legend to the northern postman. In the final summary he must be classed among those peerless fellows who, because of their courage and incredible endurance, have won for Canada this myriad-acred but hitherto waste heritage. No man here who puts his hand to the mail bags must ever look back; he must have the quality of keeping on against the odds. He is the modern young Lord Lochinvar, who stays not for brake and stops not for stone. Often his route is stretched out to hundreds of miles, and there is no corner grocery where he may thaw out his extremities while mumbling driftless things about the weather and the government.
Presently the railways will have taken over his perilous profession, and he will exist only as a memory of pioneer days. For this reason I took great heed while my host talked concerning him and of the qualities which go into making a successful postie under the aurora. He must be agile, light of weight, abstemious, trustworthy, tireless, thewed and sinewed like a lynx, and, above all, he must have wire-strung nerves. In a word, his profession requires a strong will in a sound body.
"Does it ever happen that the mail is not delivered?" I asked.
My host hesitated, and made three rings of smoke while he considered the answer, as though he would be sure-footed as to his facts.
"Sometimes it is not delivered, Madam," said he; "there may be an untoward happening, in which event its delivery depends upon the recovery of the carrier's body."
When he made another three rings of smoke he proceeded with the story. "Yes! the mail-carrier in this country is a special person and must not be judged as general. He deserves a much better reward than he gets. To my thinking, it is a vast pity poetic justice so frequently fails. It may be that some day you will write a story about us Northmen, and if you do, be sure you set down how Destiny so often blue-pencils our lives in the wrong places. We will read your book down here, all of us, just to see if you have been true to us instead of laying up for yourself royalties on earth."
"And where do you bury a postman who dies with his mail-bags?" I further pursued.
"Holy Patriarch!" he ejaculated. "You don't think he is carried back to Athabasca Landing? His body is cached in a tree and the police are notified. When they give their permission, and when the ground is thawed out in the spring, we bury him just where he died. It may, however, interest you to know that the letters 'O.H.M.S.' are cut on his tombstone."
"'O.H.M.S.'" I repeated. "Don't you mean 'I.H.S.,'Iesous Hominum Salvator, the same as we write over our altars and on our baptismal fonts?"
"No!" he replied, "I mean 'O.H.M.S.'; the same as they stamp on government letters which are franked 'On His Majesty's Service.' You see the work of delivering the mails down this way, while extremely arduous, must never for a moment be considered as menial. The carrier is a servant to none save His Imperial Majesty, George the Fifth, of England."
They are all gamblers, these Northmen: they play for love, for money or for the mere pleasure of the play, and Boys of our Heart, like the mail-couriers and the striplings of the Mounted Police, gamble with the elements for life itself.
"Ah, well!" remarked my host, as he put away his pipe for the night, "these fellows know the rules and dangers of the game when they 'sit in,' and while twenty-six of the cards are black, it is just as well to bear in mind that there are an equal number of reds."
On my return to the ship at midnight, I found that some one had seized and was occupying my state-room on the nine-tenths of the law idea. She seemed to be a woman turbulent in spirit, and, accordingly I left her in possession: also, I left her door open to the mosquitoes, who are evil whelps and more tutored in crime than you could believe.
The purser, a very agreeable and well-behaved man, gave up his office to me, but I did not rest well, in that a whirligig of jubilant mosquitoes was occupying it conjunctively. Being full-blooded and sometimes inclined to be rather mean, I endeavoured to accept this retributory plague as a chastening which might prove beneficial to both body and soul.
In the morning all the reckonings of the trip were settled at a desk beside my bunk, the men moving around with the prehensile tread of the villain who goes round a corner in the moving-picture films. I pretended they had not awakened me, and breathed with much regularity, but all the while I was stealthily peeping. They would not have understood if I had made objections to their entering, for here, at the edge of things, all men are gentlemen, or are supposed to be. Conventionality would be actual boorishness, and a woman must try and earn for herself the title of a good scout, it being the highest encomium the North can pass upon her.
Before leaving the ship for the portage, we backed into the Athabasca, and, after travelling two or three miles, unloaded a vast deal of freight at a little tent town on the bank. Here and there, through this country, you come upon these white encampments, which mean that the iron furrows of the railway are steadily pushing the frontier farther and farther north. This was the first load of freight to be brought down the Athabasca for the building of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. It was only rough hardware truck, but, withal, amiable to my eyes, standing, as it did, for the end of a long rubber between fur and wheat. You would like the looks of the young engineers who took charge of the stuff. They were no muffish sick-a-bed fellows, but brown with wind and sun, hardy-moulded and masterful. One of them has written something about life on the right-of-way, which he intends sending me to touch up a bit for a paper. It augurs well for a country when its workers love it and want to write about it.
And even so, My Canada, should I forget thee, may my pen fingers become sapless and like to poplar twigs that are blasted by fire. And may it happen in like manner to any of thy breed who are drawn away from love of thee.
We sing the open road, good friends,But here's a health to you.—WILLIAM GRIFFITH.
As one watches the efforts of the wagoners to store away the valises and rolls of blankets without ejecting the passengers, one remembers that Cæsar's word for baggage was impedimenta. But Prosper, our wagoner, is the best packer on the trail, also he can sing, "I've got rings on my fingers."
"It is strange there are so many dingy half-breeds in the world," says the person by my side who objects to her blankets being tied on behind. "To my thinking there is no colour to compare with white. 'Ishmaels,' I call these breeds."
Prosper's bearing under her choleric criticism is so superbly apathetic that I like him swiftly and completely. Any one can see that he is a man of substantial qualities and not to be excited by fidgety women.
It is fourteen rough miles from Mirror Landing to Soto Landing, along a black trail that lifts and dips through the tall ranks of the poplars and pines. The scenery offers no great varieties except those of light and shade, vista and perspective.
Whenever we pass through a thick-knit stand of pines, the people in the wagons are instinctively reticent and subdued, but, upon emerging into open space where there are only birches to throw a shimmering wayward shadow, 'tis observable that every one laughs or sings. It wasLa Marseillaisethe eight Oblate Brothers sang, and once they broke into a French ballad the theme of which was—
"Mary, I love you,Will you marry me?"
The team on our wagon is a badly mated one. The off beast trots like a sheep and has a way of hanging her head as if some one had told her a story too shocking to contemplate: while Lisette, the nigh mare, although strong as a steel cable, picks objections to every foot of the way either with a kick or an idiotic sidelong prance. Now and then Prosper, who knows the whole truth about Lisette, and who looks more religious than he really is, advises her as to her forbears and predicts as to her posterity, but, like Job's wild ass, this whimsical-minded trailer "scorneth the multitude of the city and regardeth not the crying of the driver."
"She's a female voter, she is," says an Englishman, who has been back home on a visit, "and it's a tidy bit of walloping she needs."
The London suffragettes would have been pleased with our opinion of their countryman and that we were able to express it in the exact words. After a full and unreserved apology from the frightened traveller, we, in turn, retracted the indecorous charge that he was a ridiculous pinhead, and a man of low understanding, whereupon peace once more reigned in our wagon. It is astonishing what pernicious consequences may follow from the kicking of a wayward-minded mare on the trail. Most of the frontier tragedies are attributable to this very thing.
Anderson's stopping-place which we are passing used to be the only house between Grouard and Athabasca Landing, and accordingly is a notable landmark. Anderson is still unmarried. It is forced upon the notice of a traveller in these North-Western Provinces that every bachelor has little spruce-trees around his house. The bachelor thinks we don't suspect his reason, but we know it is because he hopes, some day, they may come in handy for Christmas-trees.
We stay for a little while at the house of Ernst and Minna, who came from Europe more than six years ago. It is a sheer joy to know Minna, who is a little round-bodied woman, firm-fleshed and wholesome as an autumn apple. She has been at Athabasca Landing once. She hears there are trains there now. It may be that Madam saw them.
Minna had planned a trip to the Landing this summer but it happened she did not go after all. Ah, well! there is the money saved and she is sure to see the Landing again. Minna was going to the hospital of the good sisters to lie in with her fifth baby and Ernst was to stay here with the children. You may believe it too, that Ernst is no butter-fingers with children and a most cunning baker of bread. Minna says that down this way every man can bake bread—and does bake bread.
The little house by the trail would, of course, miss its mother for a while, but the garden seeds were in; the children's clothes were mended to the last stitch, and a parcel of baby's fixings was on its way to her from Edmonton. Now it happened there was too much important freight from the boat to carry this parcel and so it was left behind till the next trip. It was nearly too late and Minna was greatly perplexed, for surely she was going to see the Landing and how could she go without the baby's clothing.
But, at last, the parcel came, and the wagoner who delivered it was to call the next day on his return trip and take Minna with him over the portage to the boat. He came, and with him were several passengers. It was unfortunate there was no woman among them, for Minna had no neighbours; Ernst had gone down the trail, and her hour was upon her.
"Mother, she iss sick," explained her little son, "and no one iss in to come. I am by the door to stand till Father he comes back." It was nearly an hour before the distressful travellers were able to find Ernst, but no man ventured past the young sentinel.
The little daughter was half-an-hour old when Ernst was deposited on his door-step, but Minna had cared for the child herself. It was too bad the mother had fallen from the loft and hurt herself, for now, she cannot go to the hospital and she wanted to see the Landing. Ah, well! there is the money saved and that is something. It takes much money for five children.
"How old is the baby girl?" I ask, as I take my turn in kissing the mite's forehead, and in wishing that she may be a good little scout like Minna.
"She was one week last Tuesday. No! two weeks last Tuesday. Ah! Madam, I cannot surely say. Ernst I will ask him how old is the baby."
Once on the journey we passed a speckled owl in a pine-tree, but she did not answer to our "Oo-hoo!" neither did she so much as open an eye. She looks rich unto millions, and thoroughly proof against all appeals. She is what Cowper called the University of Oxford, "a rich old vixen." I intend affecting this pose myself when I find the gold at the foot of the rainbow, in order that I may be extremely insolent to the bankers and to other offensive collectors.
Prosper says he often shoots owls who lodge in the fir-trees, and that he gets two dollars bounty from the government from each one. He does not know it is accounted a sin to him who kills a bird that has sheltered in a fir-tree, or an animal that has crouched thereunder, for this is the tree of the Christ-Child, and a House of Refuge in the forest to the denizens thereof. To those men or women who love the fir, its bitter taste on their tongues may be more holy than bread or wine, and may convey to them an inly grace.
Also it is wrong to cast away the Christmas-tree, or the ropes of greenery which have been used for the celebration of Christmastide. These should be burned upon the hearth as a sweet savour, and the fire-master should say, "Peace be to this household and to all the household of Canada."
The resin of conifers is a more agreeable and a more seemly offering to Our Lady of the Snow than aloes, or myrrh or spices, so that it behoves us, her children, to look anew to our censing pots.
Since leaving Athabasca Landing, we have passed through enough uncultivated land to solve all the problems of Great Britain which arise out of unemployed workmen, and out of slum conditions with their attendant evils.
As its stupendous acreage, enormous fertility, and its lifeless voids are daily thrust upon me, I am filled with amazement. Surely no land was ever so little appreciated by its owners. If there were an ocean between it and our more populous provinces to the south, one might the better understand the reasons. This waste heritage can only be accounted for on the grounds of a lack of interest, and because people are indolent and like to live softly. Only two members of the Alberta legislature have ever visited this country, and these two belong here. It does not need a new Moses to stand and say, "This is a goodly land"; it needs a new and more drastic Joshua, to take them by the ear and lead them in. The time is coming when the crops from this land will, each year, outstrip in value all the gold money in the world, and it will not be so long either. I intend to buy as much of it myself as I can afford, and if I can persuade the Christians of my own town to lend me the money instead of building churches, I shall buy more than I can afford. I have read much about this country, but I find it better to come here and tread out the grapes for myself.
While I have been taking stock mentally of these things, we have arrived at Soto Landing, on the Lesser Slave River, and already the Indian women have come out of their tents to watch our movements. These people are called squatters hereabout, but I prefer to call them nesters. They sow not, neither do they gather into barns. They don't care to do either.
They view us women with a quiet appraising look, but not understanding "their dark, ambigious, fantasticall, propheticall, gibrish," I cannot learn their conclusions. The Factor's widow, who is still with us, heard one of the Indian men describe her hat as a pot, whereupon she remarked to him in excellent Cree that her pot lacked a handle. If I were to set down how the other Indians enjoyed this stabbing surprise, and how they were contorted with laughter by reason of their fellow's confusion, you would hardly believe me, so I shall not set it down.
One Indian woman wears a dress that has in it the many shocking colours of a Berlin-wool mat. She is pleased when we stroke it with our hands, and I can see she is as proud of it as I am of my dimity bed-gown with the pink rosebuds on it.
Dinner is ready on the boat and our appetites are too sharp-set to permit of delay. We eat and eat just as if eating were our chief and ever-lasting happiness, and as if life itself lay in a fleshpot.
This is a larger and better equipped boat than those on the Athabasca because it is meant for the lake traffic. We do not leave Soto Landing till three hours past the scheduled time, for Mr. J. K. Cornwall, the Member of Parliament for the Peace River Constituency, affectionately known hereabouts as "Jim," has chosen to make the portage afoot.
This country, from Athabasca Landing to the Peace River, is commonly described as "Jim's Country," and if you travel it over you will understand the reason.
Who supports the stopping-places on the river? Jim's freighters.
Who cuts the wood on the bank? Jim's Indians.
Who hauls the passengers, the freight, and the mail-bags over the portage? Jim's wagoners.
Who owns the ships on the Athabasca and the Slave? Why, Jim himself.
How Jim can look his pay-sheet in the eye every fortnight and keep laughing, is, to my thinking, the miracle of the North. But then it must be borne in mind that I have never seen Jim's ledger-book, and, as yet, no one else has except his accountants and bankers.
The dream of Jim's life has been to lay bare the wealth of the North, for the good of the North, and every day he is making his dream come true.
But I was telling you about Soto Landing. The freight shed here is in charge of a bachelor whose wardrobe is drying audaciously on the trees. He says he ties his clothes together with a rope and lets the current of the river wash them, but I think this statement is what Montaigne would describe as "A shameless and solemne lie."
He asks me how long I have been out from Ireland and I tell him three years. "What was the charge!" he pursues.
"Stealing the crown jewels," I reply.
"Oh!" says he, "it's the same time since I left the sod. It was for killing a landlord."
Now as this man came from New Brunswick, and as I came from Ontario, it may readily be seen that we have both become Albertans.
"Are you not ashamed to deceive a woman like me, and an ignoramus who is travelling north to gain instruction?" I ask of him.
"Woman! You're no woman. I mean you're no ignoramus—and, although you question us, I perceive you know more about the north than all of us. But seeing you wish to be further instructed, come with me to the freight shed that I may show you how the wholesale houses pack their goods. Believe me, Lady, I cut to the root of the matter when I say the only downright packers in this north country are the Hudson's Bay Company. You can plainly see this for yourself, and I hope you will inform the Board of Trade about it when you go home. Here, you will observe a set of scales, but the weights were insecurely attached and have been lost.
"This heap of refuse is the remains of a shipment of crockery that was crated too lightly. Errant improvidence, I call it. Lady, the pitcher is no longer broken at the fountain: it is our habit here to break it on the portage. It is no exaggeration when I say I am worked like a transcontinental railway system, hammering up boxes or shovelling out damaged merchandise.
"Cast your eye up at these chairs in the rafters, six dozen of them by actual count, sent north by a furniture house last year but delivery was refused by the purchaser."
"They look like good chairs," say I, "what is the matter with them?"
"Matter enough," he continues, "shipped as 'knocked-down' furniture, four legs to each chair, all of them hind legs. This was a matter of considerable vexation to the purchaser, who paid cash for the goods and for their transportation."
"But the furniture house will send the front legs," I argue.
"Might as well try to get blood out of sawdust," says he. Now, personally, I think this simile is an inconclusive one, for I have known timbermen to sweat great drops of blood into sawdust, and there is no reason why those drops could not be extracted.
This freight master is a compelling man, and he says the shippers are expert sinners and a parcel of ignorant and makeshift people. It may be he is right: it is not for me to gainsay him, or to further discompose his temper, when all the evidence is so plainly visible.
After this discussion, I play with the other children who tumble about on the hillside. They all talk Cree, and some of them who have been to school talk French and English.
One little girl, with the fine insouciance of eight years, says there is no use prayingLe Bon Dieu, for He doesn't understand Cree very well. She has repeated her prayer over and over but she has never had a soft-faced doll yet.
Solemn little mother! Her prayer, at any rate, is reasonably specific, and I can see how one of these days it is going to be answered.
It is good to rest in the shade of the trees while these copper-coloured babies jabber about me in soft Cree, and finger my hair and clothes. Truly, I am very fortunate and have much fulness of pleasure. I might be that same good girl whom an English playwright describes as having never compromised herself, and yet the wickedest child who ever was slapped could hardly have had a better time.
Gitchie Manito, the Mighty,Mitchie Manito, the bad;In the breast of every Redman,In the dust of every dead man,There's a tiny heap of Gitchie—And a mighty mound of Mitchie—There's the good and there's the bad.—CY WARMAN.
From Soto Landing, the Lesser Slave River bends its course to the north and west till it empties into Lesser Slave Lake at Sawridge. It is a small river, being about a hundred and fifty feet wide and about thirty deep. Owing to its sharp curving banks much care is required in its navigation. Its banks are heavily wooded and as we pass down its quiet reaches we seem to have sailed into a dreamful world, where just to breathe is a delight. I account it sinful to talk in these surroundings, but one may not hope to enjoy solitude for any considerable time in a country where women-travellers are sufficiently rare to arouse a raging curiosity in the breast of every male entity who comes within reach of her. People like these northmen, who live out of doors most of the year, are not easily bored. They are interested in things; they are perennially young, and this, I take it, is the secret of Pan.
Now, the trouble about having a man near is that he is always picking up your things and so making you nervous. I prefer to wait till ready to move before regaining my handkerchief, my back-comb, my hand satchel and my scarf. This is why I pretend not to notice the iron-built person with strong white teeth who has seated himself nearby and who is watching a chance to restore something. He is what the Irish call "bold-like." I know what he is thinking about and understand his motive perfectly. He wants to know if I have ever been north before. He is the thirteenth man so to wonder. I am, however, severely purposed not to tell him.
There is a belief, common in the cities, that no questions are asked in the bush; that people may travel for days together without divulging ends. Here is a good place to spend an arrow on this widely droll deception. An uninquisitive man is as hard to find here as an unsociable cockerel. Goodness Divine! the chief use of a stranger in the woods is to keep the denizens of it from dying fromennuiand lack of news. They would consider it the essence of uncordiality not to show an interest in the affairs of a stranger, especially as the stranger might possibly have succeeded in smuggling a flash [Transcriber's note: flask?] or two past the police on the prohibition line.
This bush-ranger catches me off my guard when a bulldog fly takes a piece out of my ear. It is his opportunity to produce a vial of collodion for the wound. As he pulls out the cork and finds a match to dip in the mixture, he tells me that the bulldog fly is no sweet angel and equal to ten thousand times its weight in prize-fighters—a statement which I do not think it fit to disbelieve. The collodion having eased the hurt this impudent gentleman draws up his chair and talks with an immense volubility concerning the species, genera, and habits of these flies till one might take him for a professor of entomology.
The long winter nights in this province enable the denizens of it to become well posted in any subject which they may elect to pursue. This was how the late Bishop Bompas, who lived here for over half a century, became the first authority in the world on Syriac, so that thesavantsof Europe were wont to refer their mooted points to this lonely old prelate for decision, waiting a year, or often longer, for the answer which was carried by Indians for hundreds of miles down the out trail to Edmonton. My new friend declares that, like Montaigne, the bulldog fly has only one virtue and that this one got in by stealth.
"Yes?" say I, with a rising reflection which delicately hints at an answer.
He does not seem to hear me, this cold-chilled, care-hardened northerner, and goes on stuffing his pipe with exit-plug and searching through pocket after pocket for a match as if my remark were of no concernment. He is trying to pretend he has known me for a long time, and that I was the one who took the initiative in this acquaintanceship. This is why I became dumb, and why he repeats his statement. Still I am wordless, whereupon he vouchsafes, with an exasperating drawl, that the fly's one virtue lies in the fact that it prefers picturesque food which is very eatable.
Our parliament should legislate against the cunning arts of these designing northerners, against which no town-bred woman may hope to set up an adequate defence, however perfect may be her poise, or fertile and calculating her brain.
This person tells me that all a man needs to succeed in the North-West Provinces is to keep his head hard and his pores open—a recipe, no doubt, equally applicable in the more southerly regions, and one which I am supposed to deduct he, himself, has proven with very happy success.
He has been south getting people to come to the Peace River Country, the new and unpossessed empire where there are twenty-two hours of daylight and which will, one day, be belted by a string of cities and gridironed by a score of railways. It is good to listen to this fellow talk, for, in his calculations lineal or intellectual, he can measure nothing less than a mile. He is typical of the great and splendid body of Canadian and English pioneers who have absolutely no truck with pessimism. These men and women are opening up this empire and they are under no misapprehensions concerning it. They are people with a vision, which vision they are willing to endorse with the best years of their lives.
Kitemakis, the poor one, who intends writing the book about the white folk, has drawn near to us and is listening to our talk. We invite her to join us and, after awhile, she tells us curious legends of the north in which fear does many times more prevail than love; these, and old superstitions which catch your fancy sharply and fresh the dusty dryness of your spirit.
Although they are in no great credit with historians, it is an odd idea of mine that the only true history of a country is to be found in its fairy tales. These seem to be the crystallization of the country's psychology. On the trail, on the river, in the woods, you may glean from the Redmen and their mate-women tales that are well veined with the fine gold of poetry, but which, as a general thing, are inconclusive and do not serve aright the ends of justice. As you search into the untaught minds of these Indian folk and pull on their mental muscle, you must perforce recall the amazing sensation of the gentleman who took the hand of a little ragged girl in his and felt that she wanted a thumb.
Or again, in your Anglo-Saxon superiority you may feel like that Merodach, the King of Uruk, of whom a philosopher tells us. This Merodach wished to make his enemies his footstool, so as he sat at meat, he kept a hundred kings beneath his table with their thumbs cut off that they might be living witnesses to his power and leniency.
And when Merodach observed how painfully the kings fed themselves with the crumbs that fell to them, he praised God for having given thumbs to man. "It is by the absence of thumbs," he said, "that we are enabled to discern their use."
Listen now to this tale of the North: Once there was a smiling woman in this land and wherever she went she brought warmth with her and light, so that even the ice melted in the rivers. Her eyes were blue like the flowers and her skin was white like the milk of a young mother. As she passed through the land the fish swam out of their caves, the birds rested on their nests, and even the dead women who were in the clay stirred themselves when she passed over, for once they had known lovers and had carried men children. She was vastly kind, this woman, and was known even to the dear God and the Holy Virgin in the country of the beautiful heaven.
Now, there was also in this river land an evil man of impetuous appetite who was part bear, and had seven tongues, and his arms had claws instead of hands. And it befell that when he saw the woman and heard her voice that was sweet like the singing voice of an arrow when it leaves the bow, he yearned to her with a vehement love and wooed her with cunning words and with dram songs that she might come to him and be his mate-woman.
"So strong am I," he said, "that my blow can break any skull. My skin is flushed, and my flesh is warm with thoughts of you. My bed is of soft skins and I will feed you with yellow marrow from white bones. I amMistikwan, the Head, and I have strength and skill to feed the mouth of my woman. I amAskinekew, the Young Man."
But the woman flouted him, for he was hateful with his hands of hair and his seven tongues; besides she knew, this woman, that there were matters of scandal against him and that the people of the Crees saidweyesekao, "He is a flesh-eater," and hid themselves in the trees as he passed by.
And because she thus flouted him, the dew stood out on his face like the juice on the fir-tree, for he loved her most exceedingly.
But as he drew near and grasped her in his strong arms that could not be unloosed, the woman's heart became weak as the poplar smoke when it turns into air.
And thus he holds her for nine months, thisAskinekew, the Young Man who is strong and very mischievous, till she bears him a son, when it happens that for three months he falls asleep so that the woman goes free to bring heat and light to the river-land and meat and fish to the kettles.
Thus does Kitemakis, "the poor one," tell me the story of winter and summer and of the birth of the year.
And Kitemakis, who has "the young lamb's heart among the full-grown flocks," advises me to hold no converse with left-handed people, for it is well known in these parts that such have communion with the devils.
I am bewared too, that if I have a bad dream, that is to say, if I dream of small-pox, or of white people, I must cut a lock from over my ear and burn it in the fire.
Also, Madam is instructed to throw away the wishbone of any bird she may eat in order that it may grow again and be food for other folk.
And Kitemakis tells me further that when Amisk, the beaver, dies his soul lives on. In the happy hunting grounds the beaver was a carpenter who, through some distemper of the mind, kept working while the moose were on the runway so that he frightened them away. This caused the chief hunter to become very angry and he said to the beaver, "Thou shalt built always, and men shall break down thy work and take thy pelt for covering. Also, thou shalt eat wood forever."
I cannot hear any more of these stories for my attention is drawn to a man who has come close to the ship in a small row-boat. The engine has stopped and a permit is handed to him over the side of the vessel. The man looks like a Scotchman, seems like an Irishman, but in reality is a German, an erstwhile soldier, who makes his livelihood in curing and smoking fish. He is indulging in a surly and wrong-headed paroxysm because Elise, his wife, is not on the boat. Elise went to the city to have her teeth filled and still lingers in the south. A certain rude fellow with a brass-throated laugh is suggesting of the soldier-fisherman that Elise may be appreciative of the change of society and that he is foolish to look for her under two months. "Better enjoy your permit before Elise gets home; that's my advice," enjoins the tormentor.
"About the viskey, not one tam I care," replies the irascible husband, "it's ma vife I vant. Ma vife she in Edmonton stays"—a praiseworthy choice on his part which, to our way of thinking, minifies the oft-urged but yet unproven claim that "A woman's only a woman, but a good cigar's a smoke."
As the man pushes off, Baldy, a pucker-faced fellow whose real name is Nathaniel, assures me that this German is considered "sorta queer" hereabouts, and that it is nothing short of flat irreverence for a man to speak so lightly about his permit in a land of such inordinate thirsts.
This matter of leaving home for the treatment of sore molars has suddenly become an important one in the north. Hitherto, the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company and the missionaries did not need to go to the city on business, or to see their mother-in-law; their errand was teeth. But this summer, the Company seems to have waxed over-wise, for the Inspector of Posts is bringing a dentist. It was only yesterday that a woman who [Transcriber's note: line possibly missing here] women alike consider this to be an ill courtesy and hold to the hope that the dentist may be drowned at Athabasca Landing. The woman who tells me of it believes when one gives nine-tenths of her time to the Company, the church, and the household it is not wicked to take one-tenth for herself. Indeed, there are times when she honestly desires to be wicked and to take several-tenths for herself. The whole arrangement she stigmatizes as a graceless one and a blot on the Company's escutcheon.
Still, there are drawbacks in being so far from a dentist. It was only yesterday that a woman who was using the river as her wash-pot, dropped her new set of teeth overboard. She had not been out for five years and made the trip with her husband and her two youngest sons at the cost of much time and money. However amusing the incident might be to thoughtless onlookers, at the bottom it was almost tragic, and she, at least, is hoping that the H. B. Co. dentist will meet no dire or untimely fate before reaching Grouard. This is a healthful-bodied, healthful-minded woman with a temperament that adjusts itself to life. She is proud of the fact that she is educating her five sons at home; that she cooks for the ten men engaged in her husband's saw-mill, and that she has twelve hundred cabbages in her garden. I am glad she wears a hoop of diamonds on her finger and that her fur wrap would cost a fortune in Paris. It means that her husband is no stingy, unappreciative curmudgeon and that all is well with her.
Sawridge is at the mouth of the Lesser Slave River where it enters into the lake of the same name. At present, it consists of a Hudson's Bay Company post and a telegraph office. Some day, by reason of its location, it will be a good-sized town. Farther on are the Swan Hills and the Swan River. This is the river referred to by Lever inCharles O'Malley. The young gentleman whose affairs were in an ill posture had his choice, you may remember, between going to "Hell or Swan River." This was a libel on the place and an impudent falsity, for, if you omit the mosquitoes with their unhandsome manners, one might call it the trail to Paradise. Besides, if life cut too hard the young gentleman might have taken his last trail here. It would not have been a bad death either—a wide sky, a wide sea, and a sudden dip into immortality—or oblivion.
On the lower deck, the Indians who travel to Grouard for the Golden Jubilee of the great Bishop Grouard are whiling away the time by playing poker. The cards which they use weigh twice as much as when purchased, but why worry in a land where microbes are unheard of and so have no pernicious consequence. These Indians have the air of unambitious men; they have not cared to come into the big Canadian job. They appear to do little else than eat, sleep, and gamble. But, god of civilization, what else is there to do except make love, and men cannot make love to preposterous women who work always. These fellows have, however, one saving quality, having never formed themselves into unions. Now that even the farmers have gone over to the enemy, the Redmen would appear to be our last hope.
A doctor on the boat who knows all about the Indians, tells me of their misfortunes, peccadilloes, their thin transitory pleasures and their love and practise of idleness. But this is not strange, for gossip is so common in the north that every one knows "the carryings-on" of every one else from the Arctic circle clear up to the Landing. Indeed, I have heard tell that these northerners know what you are up to before you have done it.
The Indians, the doctor would have me notice, are beginning to chew gum and hence their teeth and gums are deteriorating.
The mildewed fellow who is dealing the cards is pestiferous with disease. His birth was a biological tragedy. The doctor thinks he could best serve his tribe by dying without delay.
André, the man who has just won the jackpot, is not the prototype of the expression "Honest Indian." He is a bad Indian, a most bad Indian.
"His profession?" I ask.
"Oh, André is my camp-cook," is the reply, "and when he washes himself he uses quite a cupful of water." By way of amends, André affects a stupendous scarf-pin, a watch-chain, and two rings. Ah well! to quote Mr. Artemus Ward, "The best of us has our weaknesses, and if a man has jewelry let him show it." Besides, it is entirely thinkable that even a man like André might have to dress for those whose discernment goes no deeper than clothes and ornamentation.
The difference between an Indian and a half-breed lies in the fact that the Indian is in treaty with the government and lives on a reservation. The breed is free to come and go, but his blood is just as pure as the Indian's so far as its redness is concerned.
In most cases, the children look to their mother as the head of the family. The doctor says this is quite fitting. Take the case of Marie there—Yes! the little girl with the precise plaits—she is the daughter of old Henrietta and a Mounted Policeman. Jacqueline, her sister who in-toes so queerly, is the result of old Henrietta's fancy for a fur trader. It can be readily seen how several masculine heads to the family would complicate matters and that it is wholly desirable the girls should look to their mother for their lineage. In the north, as yet, it has not been necessary to cover vices with cloaks.
The Indian women have fallen on better days since the government passed a law prohibiting the Indian from selling his cattle without a permit from the agency, and making it illegal for a white man to purchase. Previously, the Indian gambled away his animals, leaving his squaw and papooses to suffer from starvation.
"The old effigy" asleep in the sun is, I am informed, a chief of distinction. Like Froissart's Knights, the hereditary chieftain may be blind, crippled and infirm. His body fordone with age is by them considered to be full of the spirit of wisdom. He is the giver of law and keeper of traditions. The Indians have no dead-line in their tribal codes, it being held in suspension north of 55° with the league rules and the game laws, a fact which leads to the deduction that what the world has gained by civilization is fairly balanced by what it has lost.
While we have been getting acquainted with the Indians, our ship has carried us into the finest duck grounds in the world, the teal and mallard rising from the rice beds in almost incredible numbers. It seems impossible that their numbers should ever be noticeably depleted, nor are they likely to be, until Grouard, which we have now reached, has become the splendid metropolis its people have planned and which, no doubt, their efforts will one day materialize.
"We believe," says my medical friend, "that any one who says Grouard isn't going to be a large city hasn't got things properly sized-up. I hope you won't go south again, my interesting child," he further continues; "it would seem like being cut off in the flower of your days. While sometimes shadowed here, the days are never dull, and if no one loves you in this burgh, believe me, it will be entirely your own fault."